“Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages.” ~ Samuel Johnson
I mentioned this topic briefly in my last post, but I thought maybe I would expand on it a little more. (Or a lot more…)
Pride is a basic human need, and something that every human has in some measure. No matter how beaten down and worthless we think we are, there will be a few things, possibly admitted only to ourselves, or possibly not admitted even to ourselves, from which we take some degree of pride.
They don’t have to be “big” things or things that are automatically recognized the world over as a source of pride. One person’s accomplishment may be another person’s ho-hum activity and be beneath a third person’s notice. But just because someone else might not take pride in a thing doesn’t mean we can’t or don’t.
And – sometimes we spend a great deal of time taking away our right to feel pride in an accomplishment or activity – telling ourselves we’re stupid for caring, or it was no big deal, or other people are doing other and better things – and yes, this can squelch our conscious feeling of pride in something. However, whether we allow ourselves to hold on to the feeling or not – the fact remains that the feeling was there, and the need was met.
However, because pride is an emotional need that every human being will strive to fulfill, on some level, in some way that is meaningful to them – it is also a prime target for mind control programmers, who use it as another string by which to bind their victims to them.
For example – depending on the degree to which the programmers control a particular person’s day-to-day world, they may purposefully try to prevent that person from achieving or accomplishing anything in their daily outside world.
This generally happens without any awareness on the part of the “day world” system members that there is any force at work against them – but from childhood on, the people (both internal and external) who are in collusion with the mind control programmers will make every effort to prevent the person from successfully doing anything that might fulfill their need to be proud of themselves.
At the same time, the abusive world will be busy filling the void. While the “day world” system members are left with feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction and failure, those system members who are active in the abusive world will be given rewards and accolades and advancement.
And even if, by the standards of the day world, the rewards and accolades given by the programmers are skimping and cruel – a sip of water, or merely an absence of punishment – they are still a reward in the context of the world wherein they occur and to the system members who live within that world. And if the day world is prevented from providing any standard of comparison – then even a sip of water, or exemption from torture, is better than nothing.
Better than nothing is precisely what the abusive world is striving to provide – by making sure there is nothing else but what they are offering.
The basic point is, that every person needs to take pride in something – and if the programmers are the only source of positive feedback and feelings of accomplishment available at any level, then their victims will accommodate their need to to feel pride within the abusive worlds.
Pride thereby increases a victim’s loyalty to their abusers, because the abusers are providing something that is not being satisfied anywhere else in the victim’s life; it acts as an incentive to live and profit by whatever rules or hierarchy govern a particular group, because greater accomplishment leads to greater rewards; and it increases the personal investment in the abusive world felt by those parts of the dissociative system who live in there and who feel that pride, because they are working to earn what they receive.
This has two important ramifications for healing.
First – in terms of internal collaboration and team-building – appreciating how pride was used against your system by mind control programmers can sometimes be helpful.
If there are parts of a system whose feelings of self-pride have been created by and subsequently bound to an abusive group, then the acitivies and behaviors which have been taught to them as “prideful” are likely to be absolutely appalling. And yet, the system members who engage in those acitivities will fight tooth and nail to defend them.
This is often the beginning of what becomes for many people an unbridgeable divide. How can we accept parts of our system who do such terrible things, and think they’re good?
But it is important, then, to look past the details – hard as that is, when the details tend to be so personally disturbing – but look past them to the bigger picture.
In the first place – as disturbing as those activities are, they were not chosen by us or by any part of us – so in that sense, they do not represent the things that we would have freely chosen as a source of pride if we had been left to our own devices. We must take pride in something. If only one thing is offered, and we are told “you can be proud of this” – and the environment supports that – then we will take pride in it, no matter what it is. So – as best we can, we need to avoid getting caught up in despising other parts of our system for taking pride in something so terrible, as if it was their choice or ours instead of simple psychological survival.
In the second place – the pride those system members feel is often genuinely come by – in the sense that they have worked hard and earned what has been given to them – and this is generally why they fight so hard to defend their activities.
If those system members had been given the option to play soccer – and all their blood and sweat and superhuman effort had been trained in that direction – then we would applaud their achievements. We would not be at all surprised or upset if they were proud of what they had done, or if they were fiercely defensive toward anyone who dared to imply that they should not be so proud of it. We would think their pride was justified.
But our system members were not given soccer. They were given abuse. That was all they were given, ever.
And yet, it is still their blood and sweat and superhuman effort, put into making the most of the world they were given. It is at the very least, the same amount of commitment and determination that is awe-inspiring when we approve of the direction to which it was put – and often our own survival required even more commitment and determination and effort, simply because it was achieved at the hands of people who didn’t care if they pushed our system past all rational human endurance.
So as best we can, we need to overlook the details – because no matter what those system members might say now about choosing it or liking it or wanting it… choice has never really been an option, and they have never had anything else to like or want – and we all want to hold on to things we’ve put that much of ourselves into, even if they’re unhealthy things.
But look – look at what they were able to make for themselves, out of the absolutely crappy situation they were given.
What they survived, and how they survived it – these things are as awe-inspiring as any of the feel-good stories aired during sporting events about people overcoming the odds to be where they are.
We all overcame the odds to be where we are too.
So we don’t want to strip away their pride, or make them feel less worthy or less acceptable because of what they were forced to do, or set them against us – that would demean and humiliate and unnecessarily alienate some of the strongest system members we have, and to lose some of our best potential allies in healing.
Instead – imagine how much stronger your group as a whole would be, if all the determination and intensity those system members possess was working for your group – toward safer, healthier goals and accomplishments that you can all take pride in achieving – instead of being locked into unhealthy directions. There would be no stopping you. So don’t let anything stop you from getting there – especially not yourself.
Second – in terms of personal safety – taking stock of how pride is managed within your system can be one of those “warning signs” to indicate there may be more going on in your life than you are aware of.
As mentioned earlier, the things that make us feel proud of ourselves can be quirky and individual, and the small things should not be overlooked as insignificant.
I am proud of my academic accomplishments and my professional accomplishments, my strength and my tenacity – but I also feel pride when I cook a meal that turns out well, when I go to the gym even though I hate it, when I hung my first wall shelf (even though it fell off the wall about half an hour later), when I beat my own high score in Text Twist… there are a dozen little things every day which bring small glows of pride – a dozen opportunities every day to work on letting myself keep those feelings, when they aren’t so big that I can’t help chipping away at them.
So – on the one hand, if you have trouble identifying things you are proud of in your life, you might just be looking too large and missing the small things.
But on the other hand – if you really can’t identify one single thing in your life that brings you a feeling of pride – then this can be a sign of very real trouble for you.
Because pride is a basic human need – so if you aren’t feeling any of it yourself, and you don’t know of anyone in your system who feels any better about it than you do – that means that the entirety of your need is being satisfied by other system members doing other things.
They might or might not be doing things you agree with. They might or might not be doing things that are unhealthy. They might or might not be doing things that are unsafe – for you, or possibly for someone else. The point is, they could be doing anything – so if you don’t know how this need is being met in your system, you might want to make it a priority to find out.
